


All the Missing Crooked Hearts

by littlemel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 20:24:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemel/pseuds/littlemel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian and Holland make a pact.  (Shameless otp fluffery.  The working title for this was "mawwiage.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Missing Crooked Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> For K and R, very belatedly for their birthdays, with love and thanks. Title from "Future Days" by Pearl Jam.

"So, are we gonna make one of those if-we're-not-married-by-X-then-we-marry-each-other pacts or what?" Holland asks, pushing up off the couch. She pads over to the kitchen, wine glass in hand. 

“What?” Ian laughs, his knife halfway through a cherry tomato. ‘Where did _that_ come from?” 

Holland shrugs and the wide collar of her shirt slips down, exposing a freckled shoulder. “I dunno. But come on, when was the last time we went somewhere and _weren’t_ mistaken for a couple?"

"Pretty much never.” It happened again the other day, at the market. They laughed it off, like they always do; but it makes Ian wonder every time. Holland blinks at him expectantly, and Ian sets down his knife, wipes his hands on the towel slung over his shoulder. “Wait, you’re serious about this?”

“What if I am?” she asks, her grin wide and wicked, and fuck, but he _should_ marry her.

”Well,” he says, bracing his palms on the edge of the counter, “Forty's supposed to be the magic number for that whole thing, right?” Holland nods, and he keeps going. “Yeeeah, that is... not that far off for me. And you'll be, what... thirty? When I'm forty?” Holland nods again, undeterred, and picks up her wine. Ian shakes his head. “That's way too young. And when you're forty, I'll be fifty. I mean.” He pulls a face, and Holland snorts disapprovingly into her glass.

“Um, hello? Linden’s fifty-two and still totally swoon-worthy.”

“He _is_ pretty dreamy,” Ian butts in. 

“And _you_ , honey,” says Holland, pointedly ignoring him, “are gonna be a stone-cold silver fox.” She drains the last of her wine and makes a vaguely dismissive gesture with her hand. “Besides, hasn’t Cosmo been telling women for like, decades that ‘forty is the new thirty’ and that men are hot, eligible bachelors at any age? So what’s the problem?”

“I can’t be a hot, eligible bachelor if I’m married?”

“So you trade up and become a DILF instead,” she fires back, eyes bright and jaw squared.

“Whoa, hang on, now there are kids?” Ian laughs, but that look means he’s not winning this one, so he might as well just go with it. “How many?”

“Two-point-five, of course. And we’ve already got Fivel.”

“Life’s gonna be rough for that half-kid.” Ian gestures to Holland’s empty glass. “You want a refill?”

She nods and slides it closer. ”So? Are you in, or...?” 

“Like you even need any of that marriage pact BS.” Ian turns to grabs the wine from the fridge. He pours out a glass for Holland, tops off his own and thumps the cork back into the bottle with the flat of his hand. It’s easier to deflect the question than to answer it. “You could have a husband tomorrow if you wanted."

Holland’s smile turns teasing. “Oh, really?” She rests her chin on her folded hands, bats her eyelashes. "Is that a proposal, Mr. Bohen?"

"It could be.” Ian lowers his voice, rests his elbows on the counter and leans in conspiratorially. "Wanna run down to city hall?"

Ian’s mother had said once, mostly fondly, that Ian was “not the marrying kind, darling.” But if Holland says yes right now he'll blow every red light from here to the courthouse. 

“Ian, it’s like seven o’clock, they’ve been closed for hours.”

“Right, I knew that.” He shakes his head, huffs out a soundless laugh at himself. The disappointment sits heavy in his chest, relief pulsing hotly underneath it. 

“But.” Holland cocks her head, drums her fingers on the base of her glass; one-two, one-two-three. Ian’s pulse trips along in the dragging silence. “I mean, if we’re gonna elope, we should really hit Vegas. Drive-thru chapel, Elvis impersonator, the whole nine." She picks up her glass and tilts it towards him, the barest glint of teeth in her smile. “Feel like hitting the road?”

“No can do, babe,” he _tsks_. “Early call time tomorrow.” 

Holland rolls her eyes. “Worst excuse ever! C’mon, I can be ready in an hour. We’ll totally be back by sunrise.”

“Holl, neither of us could be ready in an hour,” Ian says with a grin, and Holland harumphs. Ian steps closer and slips his arm around her waist, nosing at her hair. His hands settle on the swell of her hips, fingers pressing in slightly as he breathes in the smell of her, there in the softly curling shadows behind her ear: her coconut shampoo and powdery make-up, the distant spice of her perfume. “Besides,” he says, “we wouldn’t even have time to consummate it.”

“Oh, come on.” She leans back into him, shiver-giggling when his lips brush her ear. “You and me? We’d find a few minutes somewhere.” 

They do always manage to find a dark enough corner and enough time alone, even in a pinch, but. “The backseat of my car is hardly a honeymoon suite.” 

“Who cares!” Holland huffs and turns in Ian’s arms. She hoists herself up onto the counter and pulls him in again by the front of his shirt; this is why all of his collars are stretched out and misshapen. “We’ll throw a satin sheet and some rose petals back there and fake it.” 

Ian’s eyes flicker to his car keys across the room. If they leave in the next hour, are in and out of Vegas in less than two, and don’t hit any traffic in either direction--as if that’s ever even a possibility--they could probably make it. Maybe. He’d be completely useless in the morning, but he’s showed up to set after rougher nights. 

“So?” She hooks an ankle behind his knee and smiles, wine-wet, against his mouth. Ian’s heartbeat snags. “Whaddaya say?”

He slides his hands up her thighs and kisses her, too afraid he’ll say yes to say anything. 

***

Ian wakes up when Holland moves to get out of the bed, the loss of her warmth against him dragging him out of heavy, contented sleep. Ian grumps in protest, pushing up onto his elbows. The clock on the nightstand reads 11:52.

“Hey,” he says, sleep-rough. He touches Holland’s arm and she turns halfway, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You’re not staying?” 

“Nah, I gotta get home. Fivel’s been alone all night, she’s probably destroyed at least one of my shoes by now.” Holland sighs, but the glance she throws over her shoulder is coy, the long shadows of her eyelashes fluttering across her cheek. “And I thought you had an early call. Unless that was just a ploy to get out of marrying me...” 

“Oh, we’re back to this?”

“Hey, you’re the one who suggested city hall.”

“Which you shot down.” It’s so easy to get her riled up, sometimes he can’t help himself. 

Holland throws her head back in exasperation. “Oh my god, it was closed! _And_ I offered a viable alternative, which _you_ shot down, so.”

Ian hooks his arm around Holland’s waist and she squeals, dissolving into giggles as she falls back onto the mattress with him. Ian wraps around her, tucking his knees up behind hers, and hums happily into her hair. 

“We couldn’t even make it to dinner,” he teases. They ended up back in the kitchen between rounds, mostly naked and eating their day-old leftover Thai straight from the cartons. “What makes you think we could’ve made it to Vegas and back?”

“We could’ve made it,” she insists. “I know how you drive.”

“Sorry, babe.” Ian nuzzles the back of her neck, kisses the slope of her shoulder. “Raincheck?” he asks.

Holland twists around to look at him, their legs tangling together. She rubs the top of her foot along his calf. “Post-dated for your fortieth birthday?”

He shrugs. “Or yours. Whatever.”

Her smile flashes brightly, briefly, before she leans up to kiss him, and that’s it, he supposes. Deal sealed, but he doesn’t really think Holland’s serious about this whole thing, or that it’ll stick. It’s still a nice thought, here in the dark. 

They lie quietly for a minute, Holland’s head on his chest and her nails tracing lazy circles on his arm. Ian matches his breathing to hers, feels sleep pulling him down again. 

“Babe?” Holland sighs. “I gotta go.”

“Yeah, I know...” Ian’s hand slides across her hip as she sits up again. 

She gathers her jewelry from his nightstand and her clothes from his floor; backtracking from the bed where he slid her skirt off, to the doorway where she pulled her shirt over her head. She’s hooking on her bra, eyes scanning the floor, when Ian digs her panties out from between the sheets. He clears his throat and holds them out to her, dangling off his index finger. 

“Oh, don’t look so smug.” Holland grins, bracing a hand on the bed to lean in and kiss him again, a clinging press of lips and the quick, hot sweep of her tongue as she snatches the scrap of cotton from Ian’s finger. Ian’s heart jumps, his stomach clenches. He reaches up blindly, his thumb skidding over her cheek. 

Fuck it.

“I’d have gone through with city hall, you know,” he says. 

Holland brushes her lips over Ian’s, featherlight. She might have been nodding. “Me too.” Her eyes glitter when she pulls back. “Or Vegas. But we’re both in for it now anyway, so, spoiler alert, you know what I’m getting you for the big four-oh. And it’s _fabulous_.”

“I should be so lucky.” Ian kisses her again. “Go rescue your shoes. I’ll call you later.”

“You better.” She shoves lightly at his chest and he falls back onto the pillows, grabbing hers and jamming it under his head. 

It’s good like this, the easy intimacy and playing house. He keeps her favorite wine in his fridge; she keeps a bottle of good scotch in her kitchen. There are bits of her all over his place: the odd pair of lacy panties or errant sock in his laundry, smears of her lipstick clinging to the rims of his wine glasses and coffee mugs. Like the way his bedsheets hold her smell long after she’s gone and he drifts back to sleep with her still in his head, as if she ever really leaves it.

Ian watches through heavy-lidded eyes as Holland gets dressed and gathers her hair into a gravity-defying knot on top of her head. She pauses to blow him a kiss before slipping through the door, and Ian closes his eyes, listening to the clink and jingle of her bag, the muted thump of her boots, the door clicking shut behind her. Ian burrows deeper into the blankets and the lingering coconut-powder-spice smell of her, soaking up the last of her warmth.


End file.
